NZ Post to expand YouShop forward service to China

NZ Post to expand YouShop to China after luring 82,000
customers to forwarding service

By Suze Metherell

April 30 (BusinessDesk) – New Zealand Post plans to
roll out YouShop in China after attracting 82,000 kiwis to
the parcel forwarding service from the UK and US that was
set up to cash in on the surge in online shopping.

The state-owned postal service, which is grappling with
a slump in traditional mail volumes, says 4,000 users a
month are signing up to YouShop, using delivery addresses in
the UK and US to buy goods from companies that won't ship
overseas.

The business, which launched in September
2012, is now profitable, the company said, without giving
details. That’s encouraged it to set up a mailing address
in China, the biggest source of imported goods to New
Zealand, in the next six months.

“It’s certainly doing
well for us and it’s continued to grow in a very pleasing
sense and is proving profitable,” Joe Brophy, new
solutions development manager at NZ Post told BusinessDesk.
“As those users register and create the YouShop account it
creates an ongoing digital relationship with them and it’s
giving us the opportunity to leverage and promote other
services through that relationship.”

In 2013 New
Zealanders spent an estimated $3.6 billion shopping online
and the value is expected to grow to $6 billion by 2017
driven in large part by shoppers looking for cheaper prices,
according to PwC. Half of Australian online purchases went
to overseas retailers, a trend which has been fuelled by
cheaper prices and free shipping from international vendors,
the report said.

YouShop users most frequently bought
clothes and accessories, with Amazon the most popular
website in both the UK and US. Zara and Asos, the
‘fast-fashion’ chains, and online auction site eBay were
among the most popular UK websites for Kiwi shoppers using
YouShop, while Mac, the makeup brand, Gap and Ralph Lauren
were the top US online retailers.

Shoes, cosmetics,
electronics and home and kitchenwares were the most common
products bought, said Brophy.

He declined to give figures
for average spend per YouShop customer. It charges about $36
to ship a US$119 pair of running shoes to New Zealand from
its Oregon delivery address. FedEx’s international economy
rate would amount to about $48, based on figures posted by a
US-based online shoe retailer.

Brophy said YouShop
typically steps up marketing when the New Zealand dollar is
strong against the greenback or the pound and kiwis can
benefit from the increased spending power of their
currency.

While a large proportion of users were once or
twice monthly shoppers, looking for gifts or bargains, the
top 10 percent were frequent users, with some small
businesses making the service a core part of their
operations.

“We have a view of our users in terms of
their value and in terms of the amount of parcels they’re
shipping using our service,” Brophy said. “We see at the
top end, in the top 10 percent of users, the real savvy or
pro shoppers who use the service really well and know where
to go to get their deals. We’re probably seeing a little
bit of small business usage at that top end as
well.”

Last year NZ Post said it was cutting as many as
2,000 jobs over the next three years and scaling back
physical mail deliveries in a bid to return to
profitability. It’s chasing growth by focusing on
logistics and parcel deliveries while expanding the wealth
and insurance offerings of its Kiwibank unit.

YouShop
“is very strategically aligned in terms of the core
business focus now being in mail logistics and financial
services,” Brophy said. “Logistics is all about growth
and increasing parcel volumes. We see the potential to
continue growing it.
“

The Wellington-based BusinessDesk team led by former Bloomberg Asian top editor Jonathan Underhill and Qantas Award-winning journalist and commentator Pattrick Smellie provides a daily news feed for a serious business audience.

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